“Then you are saved,” she replied. She pressed his hand passionately, in her clasp allaying the anxiety of the cruel moments which she had been through and burst into tears. He could still find no words to thank her, and to relieve his embarrassment he tried, as he had often done when they were in a cab together, and had had a quarrel, to put his arm round the young woman’s waist, draw her towards him and snatch a kiss. His movement brought back her furious hatred and jealousy, and repulsing him fiercely she said—
“No, never, never again.”
“My poor Mila,” he said, calling her by a pet name he used in moments of passion.
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted, “the woman of whom you are talking is dead, you have killed her.”
“But you love me,” he insisted. “Ah! how you love me to have done what you did just now!”
It was her turn to make him no answer. The cab reached the top of the Rue de Babylone without the two lovers exchanging any other words than this question which Camille asked from time to time: “Are we still being followed?” and Jacques’ reply: “Yes.”
This furious pursuit by the jealous husband displayed such an evident resolve for vengeance that the actress and her companion felt again the anguish they had already experienced—she when she recognized the face of the watcher at the window of the stationary carriage, he when the sound of the bell surprised him in Madam de Bonnivet’s arms. Would the husband be duped by the plan Camille had thought out? The fact of his waiting till their cab stopped to approach the two fugitives testified to his uncertainty, or else, sure of not losing sight of the cab, he preferred to have an explanation with the man whom he believed to be his wife’s lover in a more out-of-the-way place, where he would alight. At last Camille recognized the church of Saint François Xavier which reared its two slender towers through the mist.
“Here is a good place to stop,” she said as she tapped for the driver to do so. “You will see the other carriage stop too and Bonnivet get out. He will rush towards us, and then we shall need all our coolness. Let me get out first, and if he asks why we conceal ourselves like this, talk of mother.”
It was one of those rapid scenes, which the actors themselves, when they recall them, think they have dreamt, and do not know whether they have experienced a sensation of tragedy or comedy. Life is like that, oscillating from one to the other of these two poles with an instantaneousness which has never been expressed, I think, by any writer and never will be. The change is too sudden. At the moment Camille set foot upon the pavement at the foot of the church steps, she saw Pierre de Bonnivet suddenly rise up before her; he took her arm and suddenly recognized her.
“Mademoiselle Favier!” he cried. Then he stopped, quite out of countenance, while Camille in terror cowered against Molan who had by this time also got out of the cab, and who, as if surprised at recognizing the man who had rushed toward his mistress, cried in a voice in which there was a tremor—